China Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Files for IPO in Hong Kong

China Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Files for IPO in Hong Kong

China smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. has filed for an IPO in Hong Kong, in what is expected to be the biggest IPO since Alibaba Group raising $25 billion its IPO in 2014 . The market is anticipating at least $10 billion to be raised by Xiaomi, valuing the 8 year old company at more than $100 billion. At $100 billion valuation, it will be China’s 3rd largest technology company after Alibaba and Tencent.

” China Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Files for IPO in Hong Kong “

Xiaomi is founded in 2010 by Lei Jun and 7 other co-founders. It is the 4th largest smartphone player by market share, behind Apple, Samsung and Huawei. In 2017, the smartphone maker sold 91.4 million smartphones, generated revenue of $18.09 billion (CNY 114.6 billion) and incurred a net loss of $6.93 billion (CNY 43.9 billion).

In the IPO filing under the new Hong Kong listing rule, Xiaomi will have weighted voting rights (WVR) structure, or dual-class shares. The dual-class share will give greater power to founding shareholders, even with minority shareholding. At the moment, Lei Jun owns 31.4% shareholding of Xiaomi while Lin Bin holds 13.3%.